“Polar opposites attract” is a common saying. That’s why we don’t bat an eye when we see a shy, introverted person being completely happy next to an uninhibited extrovert who will start a conversation with anyone. It’s a question of balance, a middle ground between daring and cautiousness, adventure and tranquility.
Popular wisdom dictates that this law helps keep a person’s life in check and avoids the pitfalls towards the extreme. This idea has continued into contemporary society where attraction works the same way as two magnets of opposing charges. Until now there hasn’t been a satisfactory answer to this conundrum.
People tend to fall in love with those they least expect. It could be a new colleague at work, the least attractive guy from class, or even someone who does not stand out in the romantic horizon until one day they come an obsession or guilty pleasure. This can also be reversed in the sense that the most attractive people can look fantastic from a distance. But once they’re within range, physical contact such as kissing, dancing, or hugging can have a disappointing effect.
The logic of falling in love seems to be that it functions on improbabilities and almost humorous situations. As two people meet and talk about randomness, an analysis that goes beyond physicality is completed in each of their brains.
The body carries out complex processes that can barely comprehend. The reason you can’t stop thinking about a certain someone is not because of their eyes, the shape of their lips, their confidence, or their charm.
The immune system seems to be the deciding factor when choosing the ideal sexual partner. Maria Da Graça Bicalho is the director of the Inmunogenetic and Histocompatibility Lab at the University of Paraná in Brazil. Her team has proved that body’s immune system plays an important role when selecting a mate. It’s a mechanism that has taken thousands of years of evolution to develop and is linked to sexual attraction and continuation of the species.
According to Bicalho, scent is the determining factor to know if you’re attracted to someone to the point where you would like to have sex with them. The body uses this sense to evaluate beyond a smile, muscles, or style: it’s about Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), the system that helps distinguish pathogens from the organisms own cells.
In the same way in which a team requires different kinds of talent for its overall performance, the human body generates sexual attraction between people with different MHC. The goal is as simple as it is elaborate: by choosing a sexual partner with a different MHC, the possibility of their offspring acquiring resistance to a broader variety of diseases increases dramatically.
The immunological system’s traits a person inherits from their parents alter and create an improved defense mechanism. Through the olfactory neurons, the body is able to detect the MCH variation of any potential partner to make a decision on whether their scent is attractive in order to proceed. Or on the other side, this can lead to the conclusion that as physically interesting as the other person might be, there is no chemistry.
The MCH does not solely pertain to deciding on a partner but is also linked to generating desire and increasing satisfaction from a sexual encounter. So the next time you find yourself longing for someone you never expected to be interested in, based on their physical attributes, just remember you are simply a victim to a thousand-year-old process bent on making human beings resistant to more diseases.
Sources for the original article:
The Independent
Science Daily
Translated by María Suárez
